


machine connor stops hank's suicide scene

by xiilnek



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 02:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15764538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiilnek/pseuds/xiilnek
Summary: While it's not impossible to think machine Connor would have walked out of Hank's house knowing very well what Hank was about to do, it's always felt weird to me that him walking away, once you get to that scene at all, is inevitable. No matter how you play Connor's relationship with Hank, the way that scene was written makes it obvious that Connor does care. I felt like it would be right if Connor got one final choice.So I fixed it.





	machine connor stops hank's suicide scene

**Author's Note:**

> At one point - briefly - Hank implies that if Connor does something he doesn't want him to do, Hank will kill himself. I do think it's a tactic Hank would feel was justified in that situation, but it's also something that people deserve a trigger warning for, so this is that. I wasn't sure how to put it in the tags. If I'm going to write about topics like this I want that writing to feel respectful, so consider this permission to leave a comment telling me what I might have done wrong, as long as you also tell me how I can improve in the future. 
> 
> I'd also like to give a shout out to KilotheMonster's fic The Mysterious Adventures of Connor, Boy Detective (at https://archiveofourown.org/works/15632889/chapters/36300471). It has nothing to do with this fic but it's as fun and joyful as this is heavy, and I think it would be a lovely thing to lighten your mood after you read this, if you wanted. 
> 
> Okay, that said - here we go.

"Get out!"

Connor flinches at the sudden furious volume, at the tone that, for all Hank’s anger, he’s never quite heard from him before, and begins to turn away.

And then he stops. Something powerful is surging in him and he moves with the tide of it, spinning on his heel and not seeing the error message that appears in the corner of his vision the way he never sees it, and his voice comes out hard.

“No. I won’t leave you alone like this. I told you, lieutenant, I’m worried for your safety.”

Hank's only answer is to stare at him and Connor tries to classify the look. The fury that was in Hank’s voice is nowhere in his face. What is there isn’t even anger. Is he sullen?

No. He’s not that, either. His eyelids droop, his shoulders sag. He just looks tired.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Hank says, each word dragging and hateful. “I mean it. I don’t want to see your fucking face.”

Talking, Connor realizes, is going to be a losing tactic here. Connor straightens, moving closer. “Suicide is illegal, Hank. To leave now would be to assist you in committing a crime. I’m afraid I’m not programmed to allow that.”

“Are you kidding?” Hank makes a sound that Connor decides not to classify as a laugh, runs his hands over his face, then surges to his feet. “Get the fuck out!”

Hank reaches for his gun. Connor is faster.

“What the fuck is this?” Hank asks, leaning against the table like it’s too much work to hold himself up. “Robbery? What the fuck were you just saying about not breaking laws?”

“It’s a matter of priorities,” Connor explains, studying Hank and holding the gun carefully behind himself. “Taking private property without permission is a crime. Allowing you to kill yourself is also a crime. In order to serve the greater good, I must commit one to prevent the other.”

“Is that all this is to you?” Hank lowers himself back into his chair, moving slowly and carefully although, Connor knows, he’s neither sore nor injured. Hank’s voice is quiet now, though Connor’s analysis classifies this more placid sounding tone to be just as dangerous in its potential as the louder one. “A fucking calculation? Is that all we are to you, us useless little humans?”

“Everything is a calculation, lieutenant. You humans call it instinct. I’m just more honest about it.”

“Fuck you.” Hank reaches, sighing, for his whiskey. “Well, you upheld the law. Good for you. Now are you gonna get the fuck out of my house?”

Connor opens his mouth. He bites his lip. “I-” he says. Hank doesn’t even look at him.

Connor’s voice firms. “I’m afraid it’s impossible to be thorough enough to leave you alone safely. You’ll simply have to come with me until I have the time to properly contact a mental health professional.”

“What the hell are you doing here, Connor?” Hank sounds thoroughly tired of going back and forth like this. Connor thinks he might be able to imagine how that feels. “Are you here to say goodbye, or are you just here to make my life hell one last time?”

“Neither,” Connor says and steps forward, grasping Hank’s wrists in one hand. He’s estimated, given Hank’s current state of mind and the way he’s been moving, that Hank will be neither fast enough to avoid the grip nor fast thinking enough to figure out how to break said grip before Connor removes his own tie and ties it expertly around Hank’s wrists.

His estimation was right.

“Connor, just... Please,” Hank says, tugging at Connor’s grip much more weakly than Connor knows he would normally be capable. “Please just... Leave me alone. Let me go.”

“No.” Connor narrows his eyes at Hank and turns toward the door, pulling Hank behind him toward it. “That would take too much time. I have work to do.”

Hank is silent as Connor finds the car keys. Once in the passenger seat Hank leans his head against the window, eerily silent as Connor pulls Hank’s seatbelt over him and buckles it. Hank is silent as Connor drives.

He is silent while Connor drives, and when Connor stops, and when Connor locks the car and leaves it just long enough to return with a long box which he slides into the backseat. That last does get Hank to lift his head, though, to frown, to look at the box sitting behind him. Instead of looking out the window now he frowns at Connor all the way to their destination.

This will take too long to risk leaving Hank alone in the car for it. Connor enters the building with the handle of the long box in one hand, with Hank's wrists in the other. He looks at the stairs and then at Hank, at the sagging way Hank is holding himself, at the way his steps shuffle. Connor moves them toward the elevator.

"Who're you planning to shoot?"

Connor frowns at him. Hank couldn't have missed the deviants gathered not so far away from this building. They'd been visible from the route Connor took to get here. Ordinarily, there's an eighty-six percent chance Hank would have noticed them. But this isn't ordinarily, is it? Especially not for Hank.

Connor realizes his steps have slowed. He walks faster, hits the elevator's call button.

"Connor," Hank urges. And he is urging; there is something now almost like real emotion in Hank’s voice. The tight set of Connor's shoulders, more minutely than the human eye can detect, begins to relax.

"I know a sniper rifle when I see one," Hank goes on. "Who are you planning to snipe?"

Connor watches the elevator doors while they open. "The deviants are gathered within range of this building," he says, cold, not watching Hank stumble behind him and inside the elevator. "I'd expected you to notice them."

"Well excuse me for running on fuckin fumes. Who are you going to shoot?"

Connor hits the button for, after a split second's consideration, the top floor. The elevator rises while Hank stares at him.

The doors open. Connor leads them down the hall, looking around, then stops in front of an alcove with two loveseats in front of a couple vending machines. Connor frowns at them. His LED flickers briefly yellow, and one of the machines gives a couple muffled thumps. Connor leads them to it, starts to bend down, and then looks, startled, at the hand he was going to use to reach out with. Of course he can't; there's a rifle case in it.

"Get those," Connor says, nodding toward the snacks the vending machine's dropped. "They're not very healthy, but they'll give you something more than fumes."

Hank stares at him. The quality of the stare, this time, is different. Surprised. Connor looks away from him, his lips thinning.

"Eat please, lieutenant."

After a second Hank's hands begin to move toward the vending machine. Connor keeps his grip on Hank's wrists, but allows the movement. Then Connor leads them to a loveseat where he sits and where Hank, looking baffled, sits beside him. Hank unwraps the first snack slowly, looking at the thing like he isn't quite sure what it is.

"Connor," he says, staring down at the food. "How can you be like this? How can you give a shit whether I'm eating in one second and then..."

Hank takes a breath, as if he needs it to continue. "And in the next go up to the roof and... and end everything here worth fighting for?"

"You don't think peace is a worthwhile goal?"

"It's not peace you're fighting for, Connor. It's order. That's not the same thing."

Connor looks away, at Hank's hands. "Eat, lieutenant."

"I'm not a lieutenant anymore. I know you didn't miss that, the whole thing where I quit. Pretty sure you were there. What's wrong, Connor? Can't stand to call me by my name? Too personal?"

“...Hank. Please.”

Hank eats. Then Connor leads them up.

“I thought you were just a machine,” comes Hank’s voice a few minutes later, from behind Connor as he steps out onto the roof. “But you’re not, are you? Or, you don’t have to be. You have a choice.”

“Choices are for humans, lieutenant.”

“Oh yeah? Then why am I here?”

“As advanced as I am,” Connor says without looking back, irritated, analyzing the structure of the roof and the angle of the deviants below to find the perfect spot. “There are things I’m not built to do. Answering existential questions is one of them.”

“Don’t give me that. Why am I _here_ , smartass, on this roof with your tie making my hands go numb?”

Connor’s head turns so sharply a human’s neck joint would pop, and he frowns at Hank’s hands.

“How long have they been that way?” he demands and Hank watches Connor’s face, trying to keep his fingers very still.  “I didn’t think I tied them that tight.”

At the lack of response Connor moves his frown up to Hank’s face. “If your hands lose circulation for too long you could lose them. You should have told me.”

He frowns at Hank one second more, two, then decides he’s done waiting for an answer and puts the rifle case down, reaching with both his hands now for his tie.

Hank watches while Connor begins to untie his hands. Hank considers his options, considers the paths in front of him. And the paths in front of Connor.

The tie is barely halfway undone when Hank moves a hand, setting it on top of Connor’s.

Connor’s face flies up to meet Hank’s. His eyes are wide. Then they narrow. “You lied to me. If you wanted to run you should have waited until I’d untied you, lieutenant.”

Hank doesn’t move his hand from where it rests over Connor’s. Connor doesn’t pull it away.

“You care about me,” Hank says, soft and certain. “That’s why you didn’t walk away when I told you to. That’s why you didn’t just dump me in a taxi to the nearest psych ward. That’s why you made sure I ate. That’s why you set your gun down, and why you were about to risk me getting away just so you could make sure I wasn’t hurt.”

“You care about me, Connor,” Hank goes on, looking straight into Connor’s eyes, and his voice goes very quiet. “You care. I wonder where that comes from?”

Connor yanks his hand away from Hank's and turns away, walking a couple steps toward the side of the roof.

"What they're doing down there," Hank says, nodding toward the crowd he can faintly see, the one into which Connor's planning to shoot, "It's important. They're just trying to live, and that's important. If it isn't to you, then it is to me. And that should matter to you, Connor, even if they don’t. Cause a world where we shut that down, where I just stood here while you shut that down, watching all those poor bastards get murdered just for wanting to live... that's not a world worth sticking around for."

Connor spins back toward Hank, checking his wrists. "Your hands are still tied. You can't do anything rash."

"You can't keep me tied up forever. What are you going to do, tell Cyberlife you've decided to be my babysitter for the rest of my natural life?"

"When Cyberlife reassigns me I'll take you to a facility."

"I'm a cop, Connor. You think I don't know exactly what to say? They'll keep me for observation, a week, max. And then I'm gonna get out, back into the big wide world, and I'm gonna see what you've done."

"I... I'm following orders! Do you know what that's like? This is what I was _made_ for, lieutenant! I was made for my _mission_!"

"And I didn't think you were anything more than that." For a second Hank just looks at Connor, at the expression on his face. He wonders if Connor even knows what he looks like right now. "But you know what? I think you could be."

"Weren't you listening? I was made for my mission, that's all that matters!"

Hank lifts his hands. The section of the tie Connor'd started to untie dangles between them. "You sure about that?"

Connor just stares at him, mouth working. After a couple seconds of that, of no words coming out, Connor snaps his mouth shut and stalks over toward Hank.

No, Hank realizes, not toward him. His course is a little too far to the side for that. Connor’s going for the rifle case.

Hank steps in front of it.

"Step aside."

"No."

"I can make you step aside," Connor says, not moving.

"I can kick it over the edge before you do. You know why I'm not?"

"Lieutenant."

"Cause I've realized, that's not what I'm fighting for. Those androids down there, what happens to them, it might make the world worth sticking around for. But you know what would be worth _living_ for?"

Connor frowns. He stares at him. He is in arm's length; close enough to push Hank away, close enough to reach for him.

"Christmas is coming, you know? That's got to be in your internal calendar. Christmas is always, uh- It's-" Hank tries again, and this time his voice keeps going. "It's hard. It's, it's really hard. I haven't told you why, but you said you've done your research on me. You know why, don't you?"

For a second he doesn't know if Connor is going to answer.

"Cole," Connor says, after a moment, and something sharp spasms through Hank's body, tightens up his face. "Cole Anderson."

"Yeah," Hank says, and his voice isn't steady, but the word comes out anyway. It's a few seconds before he can say any more.

"You wouldn't have to get me anything,” Hank says. “I wouldn't know what the hell to get an android, anyway. We never, uh- my parents always used to play jazz on Christmas, some of the same stuff I've got on my shelf. We never did, Sara and me, before- with, um- we were always so busy getting things ready for him, you know? But I, I think- You, me, Sumo, on the couch, the snow coming down outside. I want to show you the music my parents loved, the songs they always used to play while we opened our presents up.

“I'm not gonna knock this gun over the edge, Connor. You can even walk around me and get it, if you want. But if you do-"

He shakes his head. "There are some things worth living for, Connor. Not your mission, not doing someone else's dirty work. I can't tell you what that is, you're gonna have to figure that out yourself. But if you pick up that gun and end this whole android rebellion thing right here, I don't think you're ever going to get the chance. And I want to see it, Connor, I want to be around to see you figure out what makes life worth living. I want to see you punch Gavin in his smug fucking face. I want to drag you back to my place and show you how to nitpick cheap Hallmark movies. I want- God, I want so much. I didn't used to. Nothing I could have, anyway. But now..."

Hank steps to the side, away from the gun. "Now, you get to choose. For the first time in your life, the first time that really matters. What kind of life do you want? Not for those people down there, maybe not even for me. But for you. Do you want to be your mission, nothing but that, forever, spend the rest of your life just a tool for someone else? Or do you want to figure out how to live?"

Connor takes a step forward. He takes another. He walks toward the gun. Hank feels a horrible pressure in his chest, he watches Connor bend toward the rifle case with this horrible, familiar sense of vertigo, like everything's swaying out from underneath him.

Connor straightens. He holds the case in his hands. His LED goes red, then yellow, then red again. His face, his body, everything about him is completely still.

Then he throws the rifle case off the roof.

"Jesus." Hank raises his tied hands to his mouth, tries to breathe. "Jesus, you- you about gave me a fucking heart attack."

"I'm sorry." Connor moves to Hank, reaching for his tie and unwrapping it the rest of the way. Then he frowns, his hands going still over Hank's wrists. "You're not cold, are you?"

Hank tries to breathe, knowing the only thing he can do to stop shaking is to wait it out. "No. Fuck, Connor. No. I'm not cold."

Connor slips the tie off Hank's wrists and then just holds it, stands there looking down at it. Then he throws it over the roof. Then in quick, jerking movements, he takes off his coat and he throws that over, too. Hank watches it turn end over end and then flutter out of sight and he laughs, the sound jagged and weak and real.

"Hank."

There's something plaintive in Connor's voice, something frightened, and Hank looks back at him.

"Hank." Connor takes a breath. "I don't know what to do."

"Yeah. Isn't it great?" Hank says, and his smile fades as he watches Connor's face. "Connor. When you walked in on me in my kitchen, sitting there with my... with my gun... I knew exactly what to do. Now I don't. I don't have a goddamn clue. I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty fucking great."

Connor doesn't look steady, really, but he does keep staring at Hank, seems to get some strength from it. Hank reaches out, watches his hand shake its way across the space between them.

"Come on," Hank says. "First thing's first, let's get off this fucking roof."

Connor reaches out. He wraps his fingers around Hank's hand. Hank's hand doesn't stop shaking, he doesn't feel steady yet but, he knows, he will. They both will.

 


End file.
